Samford graduate leads international family planning effort

Updated Mar 07, 2019; Posted Oct 21, 2015

Jenny Eaton Dyer, who has a bachelor's degree in religion from Samford University, and a master's of divinity and Ph.D. in religious studies from Vanderbilt University, returned to Samford on Tuesday to discuss her work as executive director of Hope Through Healing Hands.

Jenny Dyer, a 1999 Samford University graduate, has become an important voice in promoting worldwide family planning.

Dyer, who has a Ph.D. in religious studies from Vanderbilt University and teaches health policy in the medical school there, serves as the executive director of Hope Through Healing Hands, a global health organization founded by physician and former U.S. Sen. Bill Frist.

With funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Hope Through Healing Hands advocates for continued and increased U.S. government support of family planning worldwide.

"We contribute more money to family planning than any other nation," Dyer said in a visit to Samford University on Tuesday, where she met with Vestavia Hills Baptist Church Pastor Gary Furr and several community leaders to discuss programs to assist women. Hope Through Healing Hands also works with UAB's Sparkman Center for Global Health to host events on global maternal and child health.

Hope Through Healing Hands promotes maternal and child health issues with its book 'The Mother and Child Project," published by Zondervan.

She said Hope Through Healing Hands and the Gates Foundation have policies that prohibit supporting abortion, but they promote access to contraception and family planning.

"We don't promote abortion; we're pro-life," Dyer said.

Yet abortion almost always gets tangled up in discussions of contraception.

"We need to de-stigmatize family planning," Dyer said. "If we can address family planning, we can address a wheel of issues related to poverty. It is the lynchpin to pulling a nation out of poverty."

Ethiopia has a population of more than 90 million people and that may double in the next decade, she said. The country is worried about being able to feed that many people.

"They want their women to have contraception," she said. "Women should have as many or as few children as they want."

Often, they don't have a choice because women are forced to become child brides and begin having children at a very early age, ending their education. That hampers their ability to obtain employment and support their children. "That leads to continued extreme poverty," Dyer said.

"This is a life and death issue, particularly in developing nations," Dyer said.

Hope Through Healing Hands promotes family planning including contraception, delays in childbearing until a woman reaches her twenties, and healthy spacing of pregnancies, so that children are spaced about three years apart.

That leads to healthier mothers and healthier children, with fewer maternal deaths during childbirth and lower infant mortality rates, she said. One of every 39 women giving birth in Africa dies during childbirth and more than 278,000 women die worldwide from complications of pregnancy and childbirth, Dyer said.

Having children too close together at young ages depletes the body of nutrition and leads to health problems and early deaths, she said. "Spacing is an issue in the cycle of poverty," she said. "We want women to be able to plan, time and space their children."

The problem of child brides is tied to gender inequality and domestic abuse and lack of education for women, Dyer said. That's often a problem with cultural roots.

Dyer also serves as director of the Faith-Based Coalition for Healthy Mothers and Children Worldwide, with support from the Gates Foundation. Faith groups, which provide the vast majority of healthcare in developing nations, need to work with health organizations in helping change the culture to be more equitable to women, she said.

"If we can get it to where women have two or three children, not six or eight, you change the demographics," Dyer said. "Then they can afford these kids."

Reducing unplanned pregnancies is a cost-effective way to reduce poverty, she said. "Pennies to the dollars, you can save lives," Dyer said.